This would have been an awful one to lose. Up 10-4 after 6 1/2 innings, the Yanks escaped with a 12-11 win over Texas when, on a full-count pitch with the bases loaded, David Robertson got Adrian Beltre to fly out deep to left. The out looked like a game-winning hit off the bat.

Brett Gardner led off the game with a HR (13). The red-hot Gardner was 4 for 5 in the game.

Starter and winner (Overall 6-10, 4.56; as NYY 3-0, 2.55) gave up four in the third and another in the fifth but got the win. 6 IP, 4 R, 9 H, 1 walk and 3 K.

The Yanks got seven runs in the sixth to go up 8-4. Beltran singled in two, McCann plated another on a SF. Almonte singled in one, Ryan doubled in two and then Ryan scored on a three-base error.

In the seventh, Headley singled in one run and another scored on Almonte’s forceout. 10-4. Safe, right? Nope.

A grand slam by Arencibia (who had 4 hits and 7 rbi in the game) off of Betances cut it to 10-8 in the bottom of the seventh. Mark Teixeira hit a 2-run HR (18, 359 career, passing Yogi Berra on the all-time list and tying Johnny Mize) in the eighth to put the Yanks back up 12-8.

Chase Whitley gave up a run in the bottom of the eighth and David Robertson two in the ninth to set up the ugly, wild, exasperating, but successful (for Yankees’ fans) ending.

The numbers after McCarthy left the game aren’t nice, but here they are. Too many walks, for one.

Brett Gardner hit two solo HRs, and Derek Jeter passed Carl Yastrzemski for 7th place on the all-time hits list, but the Yanks lost to Texas Monday night, 4-2.

The loss knocks the Yanks down to 54-51, 4 1/2 behind the Orioles in the AL East. They are in third place, two behind the second-place Blue Jays. The Blue Jays hold the second wild-card spot as of now.

Gardner’s 2 HR gave him 12 for the season, by far the most he’s had in a year. Can you believe he is tied with Beltran for second on the team in HR and leads the team in OPS?

Jeter’s three hits gave him 3420 for his career, one ahead of Yaz. He is now just 10 hits short of Honus Wagner for sixth on the all-time hits list.

Unfortunately for the Yanks, despite 11 hits, six by Gardner and Jeter, they couldn’t score outside of Gardner’s two solo blasts.

David Phelps pitched well, but lost it in the fifth, when he gave up all four of Texas’ runs. I have to question some thinking here.

With two out, the score tied, and the bases loaded, Phelps threw three straight fastballs to Arencibia, a .150 hitter. On an 0-2 pitch, Arencibia laced a two-run single—on the third straight fastball—for what proved to be the game-winning hit. Why give a good pitch on 0-2 to a .150 hitter? Why not a slider or a curve in the dirt to make him chase? Why didn’t they work on him?

I know… second-guessing. But between that, McCann making some misplays at first (and yes, the front office SHOULD have got someone who is a legit backup 1B instead of throwing inexperienced people like McCann, Cervelli or Johnson out there), Betances giving a run away on an errant pickoff throw Sunday and Robertson not holding the runner on on Sunday, thus enabling that runner to get into scoring position from which he then did score the game-winning run, there has been some bad thinking out there in the last two games that cost the Yankees two games. You can’t do that. Maybe Girardi has to give a wake-up call. You have to play heads-up baseball, and we haven’t seen that in the last three games, which is why the Yanks have lost three in a row.

The Yanks should get Teix back in the lineup today. They brought up Almonte yesterday and DFA’d Jeff Francis.

I’m hoping the Yanks make a deal for a righty-hitting power-hitting RF soon. Ichiro, 40, is starting to show some age and seems to be running out of gas. It was never the Yanks’ intention to play him everyday, but he is. As a result, he is down to .269, and in 36 games since June 15, has been hitting just .214. Playing everyday is wearing him down. He needs to backup/platoon. The Yanks need to find someone at the trade deadline, here.